Torero Basketball Tonight: San Diego Hosts Hartford in CIT First-Round Game

The University of San Diego men’s basketball team will play host to the University of Hartford Hawks (19-13) in a first-round game tonight (Monday, March 12) in the CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT). The 7 p.m. contest at the Jenny Craig Pavilion will be televised nationally by CBS Sports Network.

The Toreros enter tonight's game with an overall record of 18-13 after a close quarterfinal loss to BYU in the West Coast Conference Tournament on March 3. San Diego, under the direction of acting head coach Sam Scholl, are paced by a trio of junior All-WCC performers in Isaiah Pineiro (1st team), Isaiah Wright (2nd team) and Olin Carter III (honorable mention). Pineiro leads the team in both scoring (15.6 points per game) and rebounding (6.2 rebounds per game), and is followed by Wright (13.3 ppg, 5.2 assists per game) and Carter (12.5 ppg). Carter became the 25th Torero in the men's basketball program to join the 1,000-point club. He enters Monday's contest with 1,063 points (23^rd on USD's all-time list).

Hartford, a member of the America East Conference, finished third in its league at 11-5. The Hawks earned a 71-60 win over New Hampshire in the quarterfinals of the America East Tournament before falling to Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) in the semifinals, 75-60. The Hawks, under the direction of eighth-year head coach John Gallagher, are paced by 6-8 redshirt junior forward John Carroll (15.3 ppg, 6.4 rpg), 6-4 junior guard Jason Dunne (14.8 ppg) and 5-10 junior guard J.R. Lynch (13.4 ppg).

For tickets to tonight’s game, visit http://www.usdtoreros.com/ or contact the Jenny Craig Pavilion ticket office at (619) 260-7550. Ticket prices are $10 sideline, $8 baseline and $5 youth.

The 2018 CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament (CIT) is a postseason single-elimination tournament of NCAA Division I basketball teams. The tournament runs March 12-30. Participants who belonged to "mid-major" conferences and who weren’t invited to the NCAA Tournament or National Invitation Tournament comprise the field. The CIT uses the old NIT model in which there is no set bracket. Future round opponents are determined by the results of the previous round. All games are at on-campus sites.

This is USD's second appearance in the CIT. USD's 2014-15 team, under the direction of head coach Bill Grier, advanced to the third round. The Toreros defeated Portland State at the Jenny Craig Pavilion in the first round, then a road win at Sam Houston State before falling to Pacific to finish that season at 18-17.

Notable: This game is billed as the Riley Wallace Classic. Following the game, the winning team will receive a trophy, along with an MVP voted on by the media in attendance. Coach Wallace, who was head coach at the University of Hawaii for several years, has also been an instrumental part of the CIT since its inception, serving as chairman of the Selection Committee from 2010-2014. ... The last USD team to reach the NCAA Tournament was its 2007-08 team. In the opening-round game, the No. 13 seeded Toreros topped another team from Connecticut, the fourth-seeded UConn Huskies, 70-69, in overtime. In that game, then-USD sophomore guard De'Jon Jackson's jump shot with 1.2 seconds left sealed the victory.